July 2018

Analogue electronic improvisor and vocalist Phew and Raincoats founding member Ana da Silva are soon to release their first collaborative album, Island. The pair began crafting the LP by exchanging music files over email, then adding segments of spoken word in Japanese and Portuguese, manipulating them to suggest a new language. The duo call the album a reflection on friendship and isolation, and explain what they were feeling during the making of these two particular tracks below.

“Here To There”
“While making this album” says da Silva, “we were aware of the distance and of what exists in between – most of the world and the waves of the sea. And this song has a lulling feel of to-ing and fro-ing between two people that, however far and from such different cultures can still communicate and create something together.”

“I was thinking about the possibility of communication outside words” adds Phew. “This song expresses the process by which two people in remote places communicate their ideas and make music without being dominated by either idea.”

“The Fear Song”
“I asked Phew if she was afraid, in view of the political situation between the USA and North Korea. She felt fear caused by war planes passing overhead from a US airbase near her home in Japan. I fear bad decisions made by powerful and dangerous men.”

“While creating this album, various horrible things happened” says Phew. “Although music cannot be a terrible reality shelter, I thought while making this song that it would give a little power to survive this world.”